Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/228

 started them were not so unadvised, as one that is wholly unacquainted with the Laboratories of the Chymists might, at first View, suspect. For it is certain, that five distinct and tolerably uniform Substances may be drawn from most Vegetable and Animal Substances, by Fire; namely, Phlegm, Fixed Salt, Oil, Earth, and Spirit, or Volatile Salt dissolved in Phlegm. So that here is a new Field of Knowledge, of which the Ancients had no sort of Notion.

The great and successful Change hereby made (p) in the Pharmaceutical Part of Physick, shews that these Philosophers by Fire have spent their Time to very good purpose. Those Physicians who reason upon Galenical Principles acknowledge, that in very many Cases, the Tinctures, Extracts, Spirits, Volatile Salts, and Rosins of Vegetables and Animals, are much more efficacious Remedies than the Galenical Preparations of those self-same Medicines. Nay, though they are not easily reconciled to Mineral Preparations, because the Ancients not knowing how to separate them from their grosser Faeces, durst very seldom apply them to any but Chirurgical Uses; yet they themselves are forced to own, that some Diseases are of so malignant a Nature, that